"Unless the Chinese pull something out of the bag or PDVSA
[Venezuela's state oil company] exercises a voluntary bond swap
it's happening," said Brian Dean, a partner at ACG
Analytics.

"There's going to be a default in my view unless
there's some kind of political disruption ... They can sell
assets but I don't know what they have left."

The "default" calls have gotten especially loud over the last
week.

In a note Tuesday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Albert
Ades said that if Brent oil prices level off at $25, Venezuelan
GDP would hit $80 billion, making its external debt of $123
billion unpayable.

"In such a scenario, a forceful restructuring of Venezuelan debt
would be very hard to avoid," he said.

Harvard economist Ricardo Hausman, who has been attacked by the
government in the past,
wrote in the FT that while 2015 was bad, oil's low price will
make 2016 much worse.

The "most likely scenario is an imminent economic collapse and a
humanitarian crisis," he wrote.

He's talking an Argentina 2001-sized meltdown.

So the question now is, when?

Now or nowish

The most bearish of those out there in the market think it could
happen as soon as the end of this month. That's when Venezuela
has to make a $1.5 billion debt payment.

According to Reuters, the Venezuelan Central Bank has already set
to work (with the help of Deutsche Bank) to exchange
some of its pile of gold bars for cash. The country has only
about $15 billion in the bank, and 64% of that is in bars.

Reminder: This is where we
were last year.UBS

So maybe it can scrape by this time. But with $9.5 billion in
debt payments in the pipeline this year, the country is far from
in the clear.

Dean at ACG Analytics said October is "the risk point."

"If this thing lasts that long that's where I see this shaping up
in terms of default."

Of course, people have been saying that Venezuela is on the brink
since at least 2014. Yet every year the country ekes by and bond
investors get paid — a lot.

As
The Wall Street Journal pointed out, last year, Venezuelan
government bonds returned 17% for investors with the stomach to
handle this ride.